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Why the Pandemic Is So Bad in America (theatlantic.com) 542

A virus has brought the world's most powerful country to its knees. From a report: A pandemic can be prevented in two ways: Stop an infection from ever arising, or stop an infection from becoming thousands more. The first way is likely impossible. There are simply too many viruses and too many animals that harbor them. Bats alone could host thousands of unknown coronaviruses; in some Chinese caves, one out of every 20 bats is infected. Many people live near these caves, shelter in them, or collect guano from them for fertilizer. Thousands of bats also fly over these people's villages and roost in their homes, creating opportunities for the bats' viral stowaways to spill over into human hosts. Based on antibody testing in rural parts of China, Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit that studies emerging diseases, estimates that such viruses infect a substantial number of people every year. "Most infected people don't know about it, and most of the viruses aren't transmissible," Daszak says. But it takes just one transmissible virus to start a pandemic.

Sometime in late 2019, the wrong virus left a bat and ended up, perhaps via an intermediate host, in a human -- and another, and another. Eventually it found its way to the Huanan seafood market, and jumped into dozens of new hosts in an explosive super-spreading event. The COVID-19 pandemic had begun. [...] Being prepared means being ready to spring into action, "so that when something like this happens, you're moving quickly," Ronald Klain, who coordinated the U.S. response to the West African Ebola outbreak in 2014, told me. "By early February, we should have triggered a series of actions, precisely zero of which were taken." Trump could have spent those crucial early weeks mass-producing tests to detect the virus, asking companies to manufacture protective equipment and ventilators, and otherwise steeling the nation for the worst. Instead, he focused on the border. On January 31, Trump announced that the U.S. would bar entry to foreigners who had recently been in China, and urged Americans to avoid going there.

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Why the Pandemic Is So Bad in America

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04, 2020 @03:08PM (#60366203)

    January20: "I know more about viruses than anyone."
    January 22: "We have it totally under control. It's one person coming in from China. It's going to be just fine."
    February 2: "We pretty much shut it down coming in from China."
    February 24: "The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA... Stock Market starting to look very good to me!"
    February 25: "CDC and my Administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus."
    February 25: "I think that's a problem that's going to go away... They have studied it. They know very much. In fact, we're very close to a vaccine."
    February 26: "The 15 (cases in the US) within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero."
    February 26: "We're going very substantially down, not up."
    February 27: "One day it's like a miracle, it will disappear."
    February 28: "We're ordering a lot of supplies. We're ordering a lot of, uh, elements that frankly we wouldn't be ordering unless it was something like this. But we're ordering a lot of different elements of medical."
    March 2: "You take a solid flu vaccine, you don't think that could have an impact, or much of an impact, on corona?"
    March 2: "A lot of things are happening, a lot of very exciting things are happening and they're happening very rapidly."
    March 4: "If we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work â" some of them go to work, but they get better."
    March 5: "I NEVER said people that are feeling sick should go to work."
    March 5: "The United States has, as of now, only 129 cases and 11 deaths. We are working very hard to keep these numbers as low as possible!"
    March 6: "I think we're doing a really good job in this country at keeping it down⦠a tremendous job at keeping it down."
    March 6: "Anybody right now, and yesterday, anybody that needs a test gets a test. They're there. And the tests are beautiful... the tests are all perfect like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect. Right? This was not as perfect as that but pretty good."
    March 6: "I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it... Every one of these doctors said, 'How do you know so much about this?' Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president."
    March 6: "I don't need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn't our fault."
    March 8: "We have a perfectly coordinated and fine tuned plan at the White House for our attack on CoronaVirus."
    March 9: "This blindsided the world."
    March 13: "National emergency, two big words."
    March 13: "When you compare what we've done to other areas of the world, it's pretty incredible."
    March 13: "Five million (tests) within a month... I doubt we'll need anything near that."
    March 13: "I don't take responsibility at all."
    March 14. "It's something that nobody expected⦠it's one of those things that happened. It's nobody's fault."
    March 15: "This is a very contagious virus. It's incredible. But it's something that we have tremendous control over"
    March 17: "I have always known this is a real, this is a pandemic. I've felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic... I've always viewed it as very serious."
    March 19: "If we had an honest media in this country, our country would be an even greater place."
    March 19: "It could have been stopped, could have been stopped pretty easily if we had known, if everybody had known about it... Nobody knew there'd be a pandemic... of this proportion."
    March 25: "Nobody could have ever seen something like this coming."
    March 25: "It's hard not be happy with the job we're doing, that I can tell you."
    March 26: "I don't believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators. You go into major hospitals sometimes, and they'll have two ventilators. And now all of a sudden they're saying, 'Can we order 30,000 ventilators?"
    March 26: "It can't be managed by the federal government."
    March 27: "We've had great success over the past month."
    March 27: "You can call it a germ. You can call it a flu. You can call it a virus.... I'm not sure anybody even knows what it is."

  • by Friar_MJK ( 814134 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2020 @03:17PM (#60366245)
    We've got too many dumbasses in this country.
    • We've got too many dumbasses in this country.

      You are very correct.

      What makes it worse are the following:

      Hubris of the general American public. In other words, the thinking, those diseases do not happen here. They happen in those other "less developed countries."

      Many Americans are chronically ill. Once COVID vists them , they cannot survive.

      The [terrible] American healthcare system - I heard of a COVID-19 test that was billed US$4,321 to an insurance company. A fella, when advised of the cost of about US$200, simply went home - infecting 3 members o

    • USA, home of the flat earthers, anti vaccine brigade, and jesus welcome wagon.

    • by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2020 @03:56PM (#60366447)

      We've got too many dumbasses in this country.

      It's less of the fact that they are dumb (there are dumb people everywhere) and more that they subscribe to anti-intellectualism. With "entertainment" sources (Fox News etc) reinforcing that experts cannot be trusted for anything and then providing a false (and preferable/comforting) narrative. Unfortunately, people become so consumed by it that they reject evidence to the contrary and many get to the point of full blown delusion.

      People who reach the point of delusion are then easy marks for individuals pushing conspiracy theories because they are rejecting conflicting evidence in it's entirety.

      When we allowed opinion to be touted as fact and criticized people touting facts by calling them partisan, we began following a downward spiral to this point.

  • which will be written in the comments at about 95%.

  • by EzInKy ( 115248 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2020 @03:22PM (#60366259)

    The administration should have taken it seriously and devoted resources into stopping the spread. Even something as a simple as mandating masks and social distancing back in February would have slowed the spread and contained it. But, they chose to spin it as a personal attack against them and fought tooth and nail against imposing very reasonable measure to control the spread. They continue to do so to this day.

  • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2020 @03:26PM (#60366267)
    and it's too big for a state response. People can and do cross state boarders. It spreads too fast for a slapdash approach.

    There's also evidence that Jared Kushner [vanityfair.com] didn't bother with a federal testing plan because he thought the virus would only hurt his Father-In-Law's opponents.

    Speaking of which, it's painfully clear Trump thought he could ignore it and it would go away. Problem being that you can't just fast talk your way out of a pandemic. It takes real leadership.
  • by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2020 @03:27PM (#60366283)

    is because it requires the authorities to order people to do things for the greater good, such as wearing a mask, staying home and social-distancing.

    In most other countries, people understand and comply. In the US, people bitch and moan about their constitutional rights and do whatever the hell they want.

    Americans are notoriously bad at doing anything that isn't in their own immediate personal interest.

    • by zfractal ( 170078 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2020 @04:23PM (#60366573)

      My theory is that a lot of people in the US believe that they are so anti-authoritarian (note that I say "believe" and not "are") that even when confronted with facts from people who know what they are talking about, they will react negatively.

      It's almost as if the idea of being anti-authoritarian has inverted itself, something which a real authoritarian can easily exploit.

  • by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2020 @03:29PM (#60366297) Journal
    I talked to a doctor about it this weekend, and he said, "The price of freedom in America. Don't restrict our movement, but there is a price to pay. But I think it is worth it in the end."

    Americans are not willing to stay at home, either on the left or on the right, and when even doctors are saying that kind of thing, people are going to die.
  • Racist policies that have endured since the days of colonization and slavery left Indigenous and Black Americans especially vulnerable to COVID19

    Can anyone fill me in as to which policies these are?

  • by i'm probably drunk ( 6159770 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2020 @03:44PM (#60366375)

    Obese people are a high risk group for Covid-19. The US is around (varies by source) the 12th most obese country on the planet. Most of the rest of the top 20 countries are small and/or islands.

  • Such Trolling (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BurnBabyBurn ( 6407404 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2020 @04:36PM (#60366641)
    This post was a deliberately political jab at president Trump. Then these anti-masker types respond with the whole "it's not a big deal, blah blah blah" thing. None of that is germane to the question "why is the pandemic so bad in America?" A better and more relevant answer would be, there is a pattern of large bureaucracies failing to contain the pandemic. The real issue is why did 30+ years of preparation for a pandemic by multiple governments fail so badly?
    • This post was a deliberately political jab at president Trump. Then these anti-masker types respond with the whole "it's not a big deal, blah blah blah" thing. None of that is germane to the question "why is the pandemic so bad in America?" A better and more relevant answer would be, there is a pattern of large bureaucracies failing to contain the pandemic. The real issue is why did 30+ years of preparation for a pandemic by multiple governments fail so badly?

      This is a really good question, but I think your answer - large bureaucracies - is just wrong. South Korea, Taiwan and New Zealand will have proportionally large bureaucracies but have reacted very effectively. The difference is populist leaders (Johnson / Ortega / Modi / Trump / Bolsonaro) vs serious ones (Merkel / Adern / Moon). Note that this isn't a clear left/right divide, there are left and right wingers in both groups.

      The populists went for simple solutions and clear (wrong) decisions. The serio

  • $CDN (Score:4, Informative)

    by fluffernutter ( 1411889 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2020 @04:51PM (#60366725)
    While Americans writhe around and complain about their rights, Canada is opening back up. There was a low of CDN at 0.69 on Mar 13 and it is at 0.75 and seems to be steadily increasing. Canada is on its way to be fully open soon, I cannot see the trend changing.
    • I can easily see Canada's reopening trend ending soon, and fully expect to see it slow. In Alberta, which is the most America-like of Canada's provinces, our partial reopening of businesses was followed by a jump in cases. My expectation that we will see targeted shutdowns in response to flare-ups by the end of September, after schools are back up and running. I would much rather see a slow and careful reopening with minimal outbreaks than a quick reopening that has to be stopped and reversed due to large o

  • read TFA (Score:4, Informative)

    by Goldsmith ( 561202 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2020 @04:56PM (#60366741)

    Read TFA, it is F-ing great.

    That is all.

  • by ChrisMaple ( 607946 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2020 @05:31PM (#60366897)
    Rewriting history monthly for 162 years. Only now, they can only manage to do it ten times a year.
  • by sarren1901 ( 5415506 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2020 @06:22PM (#60367089)

    So why aren't the governors of the various states doing anything useful? Even Newsom in California. I don't know anyone that has been ticketed for not wearing a mask in public, despite the fact it's mandated in California. Cops have watched me walk across the street with no mask and not bothered to even say anything.

    So when the local level authorities aren't actually trying to enforce the mandated safety orders, I have to wonder how much of this is on Trump?

    I think we are American and all that entails. We are independent to a fault. We don't really trust our government or perhaps just parts of it. We won't accept in your face tracking, even if it could save your life. Even our Constitution and other laws are such that it's really hard to compel all of us to do anything.

    Compare all that to a country like Japan and it's no wonder. The Japanese believed their emperor was practically God less then 100 years. You think they might of sort of trust their government and each other more then an American would?

    In fact, I would say most countries have better family unit values and better community values. Most people in the world seem to have a larger sense of community then that of the average American.

    That's why the pandemic is so bad in America. This site https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com] puts us at 8th worst country, per capita. So we aren't number #1 per capita.

    P.S. Yes I wear a mask into public places but not when I walk around outside unless people are near by.

  • Well... is it? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by zkiwi34 ( 974563 ) on Tuesday August 04, 2020 @06:38PM (#60367159)

    Pretty much every major country has demonstrably bungled handling Covid-19.

    Add to that the not very reliable (to downright false) data on deaths, well...

    Suffice to say, maybe in a year or few the standard of data on the matter will be better.

    After all, China (on the surface) has got off lightly, but according to personal contacts I have in China, a very large number of people (maybe around a half million) have died, and China havenâ(TM)t really slowed the spread of infection much at all.

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